Among several models that I'm trying to finish this Summer is an Italeri F-18A/B that I started a couple of years ago as a "slammer". I'm using the VMFA(AW)-225 (Vagabonds) portion of the SuperScale #72-702 sheet and need to know where the smallest set of "slime lights" go. (They're a pair of small squares and don't show up in the instructions or any of my research materials.) If any "Bug" fans can help I'll be ever so grateful.
TIA!
They probably go on the "ears" above and below the LAU-7's on the wingtips. There are form lights there.
...and no self respecting Hornet driver I know refers to an F/A-18 as a "bug".
Yup, I found them. They're so tiny that they're not even molded on the model. I'm not even gonna use them. (It is a "slammer" after all...) I'll save them for one of my future Hase projects.
Okay, then what *do* they call them?
Hornets. Though the Super Hornet drivers are calling them "Rhino"...probably because of the pizza-box on the nose.
Calling an F/A-18 a "bug" appears to be something unique to the model building community. Bob Sanchez at Two-Bobs is an acquaintance of mine, and I think that's where it all started. He explained to me once about running into some legal issues over the use of "Hornet" on thier decal packaging...so they used "bug" and "super bug" to get around it, and it now seems to have become pervasive amongst modelers.
Anyway, it didn't come from the Fleet. At least not from any of the Fleet aviators I know...and I know a lot of them.
IIRC, I first saw it called "The Electric Bug" in the instructions for the Revell F-18A ca. 1982, loooooong before I'd ever heard of Two-Bobs.
Wish I knew some...
Probably an adjunct to the F-16 being called "the electric jet" because it was the first totally fly-by-wire combat aircraft, as I recall. I think the F/A-18A was the Navy's first fly-by-wire jet, though it still had/has hydromech backup systems...the F-16 doesn't. I'd hazard that even the "electric bug" moniker wasn't invented by Hornet driver.
I would have just been starting my career in '82...designing jet engine components and not paying quite the attention I would have liked to airframes because of it...that's why I quit designing engines.
Fighter jocks are an interesting group of people. Been privileged to work alongside them for the last 20-odd years, come next January.
You lucky stiff, you... :-)
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